The Digital Economy Bill : what's yours is ours
The end game is now in sight. The Digital Economy Bill is now expected to become law within the next 6 weeks. It introduces orphan works usage rights, which - unless amended, which HMG says it will not - will allow the commercial use of any photograph whose author cannot be identified through a suitably negligent search. That is potentially about 90% of the photos on the internet.
Copyright in photos is essentially going to cease to exist, since there is no ineradicable way of associating ownership details short of plastering your name right across the image. Photographer's organisations have pressed hard for mandatory attribution to deter orphans being manufactured. Early in the consultation process the IPO accepted the irresistible logic that it was completely unreasonable to permit orphan use without a balancing requirement to not orphan photos in the first place. However, the IPO recognised with dismay that this would mean "taking on Rupert" (Murdoch).
Publishers have a long history of opposing our moral rights. They were responsible for the feeble and unenforceable moral rights clauses in the 1988 Act. They want their branding, not ours, and they want maximum freedom to exploit our IP at minimum cost and inconvenience.
The IPO avoided confrontation with Murdoch, who does have something of a rep for being a vital friend in an election year. The Bill contains no deterrent to the creation of orphans, no penalties for anonymising your work, no requirement for bylines. It is a luncheon voucher for industry hungry for free and cheap content.
So Flickr, Google Images, personal websites, all of it will become commercial publishers' photolibrary. A fee will have to be deposited with a collecting society in case the owner spots the usage. The author who discovers his work has been used as an orphan can then make a claim and receive a percentage of the peanuts, after the collecting society has had its share, and the government its share.
This is perhaps a slight improvement over earlier proposals, whereby HMG egregiously planned to keep all the fees itself.
Essentially, if photos were cars, so long as the numberplate is missing (or you can get rid of it and claim it was), you'll be able to legally TWOC and use it on payment of a fee to the Government.
The quaint notion that the author alone has prime and inalienable rights over his/her own work, must be able to restrict usage, negotiate a fee, prevent usage they consider immoral or distasteful, or assert their moral right to attribution, is about to pass into history.
This is the biggest change in UK copyright law in 150 years. It also punches holes through the Berne agreement, international copyright law and TRIPS.
It most certainly is not an issue that affects only pro's, who for the most part are doomed anyway. Simple economics of media evolution are driving commercial users toward free or very cheap content, sourced from readers and users, microstock, hobbyists, and we suspect that Government is using orphan works legislation as a means to oil the wheels of Britain's publishing industry. Cultural freedom, the worthy concerns of museums and galleries, are just a Trojan horse. If they were not, none of this chicanery would be necessary, a simple extension to fair dealing would have solved the orphans problem.
So it is amateurs who should worry most. Pro's tend to be careful about asserting copyright and being easy to find, because it's their livelihood. Amateurs just don't want to know about this dull legal stuff or spend hours embedding IPTC, even if they know what it is. They want to concentrate on the enjoyable bits of shooting and sharing their work, often via free services and untraceable nicknames. If work gets published without payment, they tend to feel flattered rather than robbed anyway. If they can claim a few quid from a collecting society they'll be chuffed. It is their photographs that will become easy targets for orphan claims, relieving commercial publishers of the tedious necessity of needing to ask permission when they can't easily find the owner. But the fact remains that photographers will have been serially robbed with government connivance.
Back door man
Most of this state-sponsored thieves' charter isn't even going through Parliament as primary legislation. The Digital Economy bill Section 42 sections 16a, 16b, 16c enable ad hoc regulation by Mandelson's office without further legislation. None of that will ever be voted on.
In fact what an "orphan work" is remains undefined in the Bill. Simlarly, what precisely will comprise an "adequate search", what level of fee will be required, how the fee will be divided between the revenant author and the collecting society, who will benefit from unclaimed fees, who the extended licensing societies will be and what rules they will have to follow, are all unspecified and unknown to supporters and opponents alike. As far as orphans and photographers are concerned, this is a deliberate shell of a bill whose real payload will not be made apparent until it is too late to do anything about it.
Remarkably, even though it simply isn't possible for them to know what they were voting for, only a handful of Lib-Dem and Tory Lords expressed concern during Monday's Lords debate.
This covert approach to major legislation did not escape the attention of the Lords Select Committee on the Constution, who wrote to Mandelson in December :
"The Committee's view is that this is inappropriate, and that "orphan work" should be defined in the Bill. Likewise the following matters are left for you as Secretary of State and are not settled in the Bill: the treatment of royalties, the deduction of administrative costs, the period for which sums must be held for the copyright owner, and the subsequent treatment of those sums. The Committee notes that regulations made under this section are subject only to negative resolution procedure; and that the provisions contain no express duty on you as Secretary of State to consult appropriate stakeholders....it would greatly assist the Committee if you could explain why you consider it to be constitutionally appropriate for what appear to be such wide-ranging and open-ended rule-making powers to be conferred on you as Secretary of State."
Mandelson replied that the need for flexibility in specifying what comprises an adequate search makes this difficult. That what is an orphan work will change according to evolving methods of determining its status. (An astonishing concept borrowed perhaps from quantum mechanics). He gives no clues what an adequate search may comprise because that too is subject to change. Therefore we have no clue what an orphan work may be, but rest assured the law needs to change to address the dire handicap that orphans present to creativity. Who can argue with that? But he does at least promise yet more IPO public consultation. In over 3 years of consultation with photographers' representative bodies, Gowers, Lammy, the IPO have proved deaf as a post, so this is not reassuring.
Nor have the answers been any clearer regarding the EC Human Rights implications of disposing of some unknown person's copyright. "No Articles are engaged by the provision itself as the provision only contains a power and has no immediate substantive effect" is a truly audacious Houdini-ism. But anyhow, according to Mandelson ECHR allows him to do anything he likes with other peoples' copyright so long as it is in the public interest, and so long as people can opt out of the licensing arrangements he undertakes - which appears to mean they forfeit collecting society fees. Can they sue for infringement? Sorry, don't know, nobody knows
Even if he can't tell the public or Parliament what he's going to do or how any of it will impact on us, or how the sums work, or even how much money government will rake off the deal with collecting societies, or even exactly what "opt out" means, he is at least sure all of it will be in the public interest. Mandelson has a long, long list of informal soothing assurances to live up to, but once the law is passed they may well be worthless. There is little point is reserving to oneself unaccountable Godlike powers of unlimited "flexibility" if one does not intend to use them. In the public interest, of course. That's not defined either.
Whatever next
Now that their Lordships have nodded through this masterpiece of double-blind opacity, it will return to the House of Lords for the report stage on 1st March, with none of our elected representatives being any the wiser when they vote, but reliably following party lines. The Government is determined to see the Digital Economy Bill passed without further amendment before the May 6th election date. A cynic might think that, having watched the fate of successive US orphan rights Bills and the international uproar among visual creators, the UK Government has been very clever indeed at closing down debate and circumventing democracy. Nobody can argue with what is still secret. Genius.
The ICO code : put that camera away, my face is private
Not content with abrogating photographers' copyright, another part of Government is now going some way to ban photography altogether in public places, for data protection reasons. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) proposed new code for personal information online has "commonsense" new rules that in effect will prohibit photography in public places where anyone who's in the photograph might be unhappy about being photographed. A photo, taken in public, is now deemed private data, y'see.
CCTV, full body scans at airports, no problem, but if an ordinary person takes a photo, this Kafkasesque notion of privacy in public will apply. Unless it's on film. You'd probably be OK taking photos of someone committing a criminal offence too, as ICO thinks this shouldn't be private information.
Mindful of the damage this would do to tourism and how much it would piss off Joe Public to be told he can't use his cameraphone in the street to make humiliating snaps of his drunk mates for Facebook (and quite possibly subsequent orphan use by Rupert Murdoch), ICO have decided that this lunacy shall only apply to pro photographers, a small enough constituency to castrate with impunity.
Of course ICO thinks all pro photography is deeply unpopular paparazzi harassment of our beloved celebrities so it is acting in a most principled manner for, you guessed, the public interest. Minor considerations like journalism, history, social documentary, freedom of expression - and even the simple logic that if you can eyeball it in public, it can't possibly be private - all are just collateral damage. At a stroke, ICO is redefining allowable photography to exclude all that contentious street stuff that has made the record of the last 150 years so insightful. Consensual falsehoods, celebrity promotion, ridiculous propaganda, marketing nonsense will all be fine, however.
"Consultation" has, in the now time-honoured manner, met with stonewall indifference. As far as ICO are concerned, there is not a problem. It simply means pro photographers must not take any photo that anyone in the picture may object to. They don't have to actually object, the photographer has to guess whether they might and do the responsible thing.
Almost always that will mean putting the camera away and going home. In the most CCTV-monitored and nannied country in the world, once the bossed-about public gets the idea that they have a right to not be photographed in public places they wil point blank refuse, just to assert the one tiny freedom left to them. At last they will no longer have to imagine privacy rights they don't have. The prejudice and suspicion against anyone with a big camera will be officially sanctioned. Photographers will not only be potential paedophiles and terrorists, but identity-thieving personal data pirates too.
Of course, we already have police and PCSO's deploying S44 TA2000 for the purpose of interdicting photography in public places. That has admittedly been ruled illegal under ECHR by the European Court in Strasbourg, but HMG assure that is in the public interest too and police say it is a vital part of the fight against terrorism, so the law lives on.
All told, at this rate it will soon be easier to photograph in North Korea than UK.
[EDIT:
Just to be entirely clear, the above article deals with two separate issues emanating from two different government departments.
1. Digital Economy Bill
We urge you to write to your MP about the orphan licensing provisions of the Digital Economy Bill. Pressure on our elected representatives is now the only way to stop the Bill, and time is short.
It is better to write your own unique letter because MP's take less notice of organised campaigns than individual constituents, but if it helps a template letter is available here. Word (.doc), RTF (.rtf) and plain text (.txt) versions may be downloaded from the bottom of that page. Adapt it, change it, write something entirely different, but write!
If you can, don't just email. A proper letter on paper sent through the post, or even a fax will command a great deal more attention. Recorded delivery is best of all - they might think it's from the Fees Office ;-)
How to find your MP's name and contact details is described here.
2. ICO Personal Information Online consultation
In response to inquiries correctly noting that the ICO code does not explicitly mention photography please read the comment below : "ICO and Photography in Public places : a clarification"
The ICO consultation is ongoing and concludes on 5 March. Please email consultations@ico.gsi.gov.uk seeking urgent clarification regarding their interpretation of data protection law regarding photography in public places.
- last edited 19 Feb 2010]
Sounds to me like the second item is aimed squarely at blocking Google Street View from existing, no?
Actually, to be fair to Lessig, although he is very much an advocate for Creative Commons free culture and a truncated copyright regime that encourages sharing, he spoke out against the implications of US orphan rights for photographers describing it as "unfair and unwise" . He also signed a petition against the 2008 Bill.
The whole debate has been skewed by wrong assumptions. On one hand, people as a whole are resentful of the monopolistic power that results from corporate use of copyright. This leads them to detest copyright itself, and it leads government to try and legislate in the war of attrition between the two groups, consumers and industry. But in no-man's land are creators themselves - the people who actually make the stuff everybody else is fighting over. We take damage from both the public who think it fair enough to infringe as payback, and corporates who use their economic power to drive down prices to below viability, and enforce copyright grabs.
If publishers are Tesco, and the public are shoppers, we are the little farmers. The shoppers just want cheap or free, Tesco try to give them that at our expense. We have little power because we are small individual businesses.
Copyright is supposed to be a means for people who aren't rich, to support their creative works for the benefit of society. That original good and sensible meaning has all but been lost. The trouble is that there is nothing better.
I wrote about all this c.2006 in an analysis of the Gowers report. Nothing has improved, it's just got worse and DEB is the next step toward turning creator smallholders into landless peasants.
©A admin
Am I missing something here? All this started years ago in the states and the same people lobbying there are involved here (Prof. Lessig, et al)...it's just about the money... predictably!
Well see this from Amateur Photographer:
"The watchdog stressed that, although background shots of passers-by will not normally breach the Data Protection Act, images of a small group of clearly identifiable people, sent for publication to a newspaper website for example, may be considered an infringement.
In this situation, according to the ICO, photographers should ask themselves whether the subjects would object to their picture being published in this way, and consider blurring their faces."
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/photographers_and_privacy_fear...
And from the following document it is clear that the Data Protection Act can apply to photography.
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/detailed_...
Here are some of the more general issues I see with the DPA as applied to journalism.
From the above document (pages 23-25) it is clear that the EU directive is applicable to sound and image information, if processed "in an automated manner or the information is contained in a relevant filing system". This is interpreted by the ICO that hardcopy images (negs and prints) do not come under the DPA unless retained with other info in a 'relevant filing system'. But if it is scanned it is then 'automatically processed'. Digital recording techniques for sound and moving images are also said to be 'processed automatically for the purposes of the DPA and is therefore 'personal data'
The issue here is that as most journalistic material is now captured and/or stored digitally and is therefore 'automated', most of it now comes under the DPA, even for stock images showing people without their names, whereas before with non-digital technology it did not always come under the DPA. I fail to see the logic of 'automation' as applied to journalistic material. Editorial decisions are made at every stage of the process from what to record to what to publish. Simply because something is processed digitally does not lead to a different publishing outcome than if it was done non-digitally.
This could change the practice and scope of journalism, particularly visual journalism, where the act of recording and publishing even without other personal identifiers such as names, can lead to identification of individuals. This is likely to be very detrimental to visual journalism, and I suspect is an unforseen consequence of the law. Ultimately the law needs to be amended at both UK and EU level to exempt visual journalism, as it already exempts social and domestic activity.
Here is the section of the Digital Economy Bill that deals with orphan works, from the final published version of 16 Nov 2009.
42 Extension and regulation of licensing of copyright and performers’ rights
(1) In the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (the “1988 Act”) after section
116 insert—
116A Licensing of orphan works
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide for authorising a
licensing body or other person to do, or to grant licences to do, acts in
relation to an orphan work which would otherwise require the consent
of the copyright owner.
(2) An authorisation or licence under the regulations in favour of any
person must not preclude any authorisation or licence in favour of
another person.
(3) The regulations may provide for the treatment of royalties or other
sums paid in respect of an authorisation or licence, including—
(a) the deduction of administrative costs;
(b) the period for which sums must be held for the copyright
owner;
(c) the treatment of sums after that period (as bona vacantia or
otherwise).
(4) The regulations may provide for determining the rights and obligations
of any person if a work ceases to be an orphan work.
(5) The regulations may provide for the Secretary of State to determine
whether any requirement of the regulations for a person’s becoming or
remaining authorised has been met or ceased to be met.
(6) In this Part references to a work as or as ceasing to be an orphan work
are to be read in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of
State.
(7) Regulations under subsection (6) may operate by reference to guidance
published from time to time by any person.
116B Extended licensing schemes
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide for authorising a
licensing body to grant copyright licences (within the meaning of
section 116) in respect of works in which copyright is not owned by the
body or a person on whose behalf the body acts.
(2) The regulations may not authorise the grant of a licence—
(a) in respect of an unpublished work, or
(b) in respect of rights excluded by notice given by the copyright
owner in accordance with the regulations.
(3) Subsections (2) to (5) of section 116A apply to regulations under this
section (but subsections (3)(b) and (c) and (4) apply only in relation to
an orphan work).
116C Regulation and enforcement
Schedule A1 confers powers to provide for—
(a) codes of practice relating to licensing bodies, and
(b) the regulation of licensing bodies and of other persons
authorised under section 116A or 116B.
116D General
(1) Nothing in section 116B or Schedule A1 applies in relation to Crown
copyright or Parliamentary copyright.
(2) The powers conferred by sections 116A and 116B and Schedule A1
include in particular power—
(a) to make incidental, supplementary or consequential provision;
(b) to make different provision for different purposes;
(c) to make provision amending this Part;
(d) to extend or restrict the jurisdiction of the Copyright Tribunal.
(3) The power to make regulations under sections 116A and 116B and
Schedule A1 is exercisable by statutory instrument.
(4) A statutory instrument containing such regulations is subject to
annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament,
but that is subject to subsection (5).
(5) Where the regulations amend this Part, a statutory instrument
containing them may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has
been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of
Parliament.”
(2) Schedule 2 (which inserts Schedule A1 to the 1988 Act and makes provision in
relation to performers’ property rights corresponding to provision made by
this section in relation to copyright) has effect.
(3) In the 1988 Act insert in the appropriate place—
(a) in section 179 (index of defined expressions in Part 1)—
(b) in section 212 (index of defined expressions in Part 2)—
/end of s42.
©A admin
There are two large and separate issues here, and it was probably a mistake to publish a single piece about them.
You are correct about the ICO code of conduct. There isn't a mention of photography anywhere in it. The source is not published material, but what ICO has said during consultation. Please see my comment in this thread "The ICO and photography in public : a clarification".
Regarding orphan works. Yes, most photo sharing systems have some sort of private messaging system, although you often have to be a registered member to use them or even see that there is a way to contact someone. Resumes are often hidden too. If it works, fine, but for photos posted under cryptic pseudonyms and without metadata, it's a thin thread to rely upon. What if the owner doesn't read his/her PM? Any system has a minority of active users and a bunch of lurkers who participate intermittently.
There's not a lot wrong with the existing principle that, if you can't find or contact the owner, you can't use it, as far as commercial publishing is concerned. Genuine orphan works of the sort the law is ostensibly supposed to address, are in museum and gallery vaults and databases, not on Flickr. Grabbing someone's photos to make a few quid because Google images helped find suitable orphans just should not arise, and is only possible because DEB goes far beyond the requirements of cultural freedom.
At present, publishers helping themselves and waiting for the author to chase them are simply infringing but trying to look as if they aren't really. This is certainly common practice, and a great way to save money. Many publishers have got creative, using archive pictures and marking up their file copy "await invoice", then hoping the author never finds out. Mostly they won't. This wheeze is facilitated at some newspapers by the IPTC copyright info having been overwritten by the desk software, and is a good example of publishers creating orphans and then paying no-one because they don't know who to pay. Similarly not reporting usages to photolibraries appears to be a standard business practice. Most of the reason to worry about orphan works is the sheer scale of rotten cheating by commercial publishers. We can rely on most of them to exploit every opportunity for abuse.
You also make a fair point about the self-interested role of collecting societies. As I understand it they are very keen on all this, it's a business expansion opportunity. How large the slice they will be able to take is not public, just as how much HMG will help itself to awaits Mandelson's disclosure. He has said government's share will not be more than the cost of running the scheme, but we all know how good goverment is at restraining costs. All told I'll be surprised if the net amount available to a revenant author is more than 40-50% of the fee levied. Just like most photo agencies, then. What we don't know at all is whether the "fair market rates" they'll charge for licensing will be microstock pennies or more normal commercial rates.
It's also the case that museums and galleries will be able to license their orphans for commercial use. Everyone stands to gain except the poor sod whose work has gone AWOL.
As you surmise, Mandelson's sexuality is of no interest or relevance, and when I wrote that subhead and until you mentioned it I wasn't even sure he was gay, that's how interested I am. The Jimmy Page song just came to mind, which is cleverly ambiguous - possibly about heterosexual anal sex, or maybe just sneaking around to the back of the girl's house to hide from her parents. The "back door" I had in mind was the disgraceful Section 42 clauses 116a, 116b, 116c, a back door in the software sense, allowing malicious code to be unilaterally inserted by the Secretary of State and cunningly avoiding Parliamentary scrutiny. Read it again if in doubt : all the definitions are devolved to regulations that don't exist yet, and that makes it really hard to argue against what isn't there until it's too late. But to stay with the double entendre, it's Mandelson doing the rogering and us on the receiving end, and I don't see what gay or otherwise have to do with it. It's non-consensual and I'm not happy and I'll let it stand as an equal-opportunity, sexuality-neutral, gender-irrelevant insult, if you don't mind.
©A admin
Astonishing stuff. Given the insidious and obfuscated nature of the material you're dealing with,tot would be hugely helpful if you could directly link your points to the relevant pages in the proposals. I've just spent a while looking through the ICO bumf for any reference to photography, without success. If the effect is as you suggest, it's insane.
Re the orphan works provision, services such as Flickr generally offer a means of messaging the creator of a photo. This would surely fall within even the most liberal interpretation of an adequate search. It's already common practice for publishers to print a statement to the effect that not all copyright holders could be traced and anyone claiming infringement should get in touch. Isn't this just clarifying current practice? I do find it extremely worrying, though, to see more statutory involvement of collection agencies, which seem often to be capricious in both their collection and distribution of fees (see PRS vs small business owners, prisons, anyone with a radio, kittens, etc).
On a separate topic: could you possibly revisit the crosshead "Back door man" in your piece on DEB? It doesn't make any sense except as a snide reference to Mandelson's sexuality, which is one of the few things that I'm sure you don't actually hold against him.
A couple of quick points
- Yes, paparazzi get us all a bad name, but they are a symptom of celebrity culture and it is one of few bits of photography where there is money to be made. If only the public would stop buying the dreck the problem would go away. Meanwhile they are propelling the creation of lots of case law that impacts all of us. Please see the adjacent comment "The ICO and Photography in public" for example.
- Steganographic watermarking usually significantly degrades image quality and is not very robust anyway. It can usually be rendered unintelligible by a few Photoshop operations. Useful perhaps against casual abuse, but there really is no technical means of ensuring author's details and photograph remain together. Enforceable legal means of ensuring that whenever a photo is published it is not orphaned is what we've been asking for.
- We're working on a YouGov petition, but it is vital to get the wording exactly right. These things are far too often fatally flawed, and consequently ignored.
©A admin
The ICO and Photography in public places : clarification
The specific provisions regarding photography are nowhere in the code as written at the ICO consultation site. I read it a month or so ago and as far as I recall it doesn't even mention photography. Although there is clearly scope for applicability to photographs as there has been with data protection law for a decade or more, I assumed that the previous ICO stance would continue. EPUK has previously sought clarification and been assured that, although technically photos can qualify as personal data, there are exceptions that apply to journalistic material, and in any case it was not a matter that ICO wished to take an active interest in unless there were substantive complaints.
The goalposts have now moved. There have been a few court cases, most notably JK Rowling's 2008 case against Big Pictures Ltd, for photographing her son. Rowling argued and won a ruling that her son was entitled to privacy (under ECHR article 8) even though he was in the street. It followed on from that, that the "personal data" illegally obtained and handled by Big Pictures also broke data protection law. Out-law has the details here.
The current ICO position, then, is an extrapolation of the above. If privacy is possible in a public place, then what comprises privacy? During the consultation, this question has been asked by an organisation that represents photographers.
According to the ICO response, which Copyright Action has seen, simply not wanting to be photographed is all it takes. So the photographer must ask permission or guess whether the person may object to being included in a photograph, else he will illegally possess "personal data" and commit a criminal offence under data protection law.
This is all horridly logical, and in its own hermetic way, entirely reasonable. However it changes the rules utterly where street photography, journalism and the recording of daily life are concerned. Photographers will simply be unable to guess when some furious member of the public will charge out of a street scene complaining that the photographer has just committed a criminal offence.
More troubling still perhaps, this will prevent scrutiny and recording of public servants such as traffic wardens or police, within public places. This will very much diminish accountability. Only if they commit an offence is their entitlement to private data overridden.
The inconsistency with CCTV is astonishing. Whether privately owned or controlled by civic authorities, monitoring appears possible without any of ICO's caveats regarding permission. So we now have a legal framework within which photography by citizens of their fellows is potentially an offence at the whim of the subject, but photography of the same subject by authority is uninhibited so long as a sign is displayed. In the same place, at the same time, quite possibly! This new version of privacy depends on who is looking, apparently. It remains to be seen quite why a shop owner has greater rights to film than you or I. Perhaps some well-heeled celebrity would like to sue Fortnum & Mason and sort out our civil liberties ASAP? Actually, no, please don't, you'll only make it worse.
The ICO insistence that this will only apply to professional photographers also looks absurd. The public won't make any such fine discriminations, they won't yell "Oi! You can't take my picture unless you're a hobbyist". Will a camera club card prevent criminal charges? In any event, how can privacy rights and data legality hinge on occupation? Amateurs are as likely to publish their work as pro's. An unconsented photo on Flickr or Facebook, or a hobby blog, is surely as likely to breach these inventive conceptions of privacy in public and become "illegal data" too.
The ICO consultation is ongoing at http://ico-consult.limehouse.co.uk/portal/cop/pio?pointId=1061680#docume...
and now would be a good time to point out these and other idiocies, just in case there is a residue of commonsense left among the lawyers making up this illiberal garbage.
©A admin
What ever next!
If you have grabbed the essence of the legislation I am equally frustrated.
I found it annoying that I had to be briefed about 'stop and account' recently - so this is the next step!
Privacy
I do think that 'professionals' who invade people's privacy, in other than public places, do need constraining. Also in public places if they are being physically intrusive. This legislation is surely not the way to achieve this.
And how anyone thinks that stopping photography is effective in the war against terror I can't understand. I seem to think that photographers have often protected the freedom of individuals against abuse.
Photography in public places has always been permitted, think how much of our history has been captured by photographers amateur and professional.
Copyright
I believe that that are ways to digitally sign photographs using Steganography (by putting your signature into the picture files in an invisible way) e.g. Steganos Privacy Suite has provision for this and I believe that this remains with the pictures even if they are cropped. It is then fairly simple to prove ownership by decrypting the image using a public key.
[I stand to be corrected on this!]
Is there no petition on the You Gov site?
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